The Black Bag - Louis Joseph Vance (best reads of all time txt) 📗

his cane through the trap, repeating the address. The

cab wheeled smartly across Piccadilly, swung into Half Moon Street, and

thereafter made better time, darting briskly down abrupt vistas of shining

pavement, walled in by blank-visaged houses, or round two sides of one of

London’s innumerable private parks, wherein spring foliage glowed a tender

green in artificial light; now and again it crossed brilliant main arteries

of travel, and eventually emerged from a maze of backways into Oxford

Street, to hammer eastwards to Tottenham Court Road.

 

Constraint hung like a curtain between the two; a silence which the young

man forbore to moderate, finding more delight that he had cared (or dared)

confess to, in contemplation of the pure girlish profile so close to him.

 

She seemed quite unaware of him, lost in thought, large eyes sober, lips

serious that were fashioned for laughter, round little chin firm with some

occult resolution. It was not hard to fancy her nerves keyed to a high

pitch of courage and determination, nor easy to guess for what reason.

Watching always, keenly sensitive to the beauty of each salient line

betrayed by the flying lights, Kirkwood’s own consciousness lost itself in

a profitless, even a perilous labyrinth of conjecture.

 

The cab stopped. Both occupants came to their senses with a little start.

The girl leaned out over; the apron, recognized the house she sought in one

swift glance, testified to the recognition with a hushed exclamation,

and began to arrange her skirts. Kirkwood, unheeding her faint-hearted

protests, jumped out, interposing his cane between her skirts and the

wheel. Simultaneously he received a vivid mental photograph of the

locality.

 

Frognall Street proved to be one of those by-ways, a short block in

length, which, hemmed in on all sides by a meaner purlieu, has (even in

Bloomsbury!) escaped the sordid commercial eye of the keeper of furnished

lodgings, retaining jealously something of the old-time dignity and reserve

that were its pride in the days before Society swarmed upon Mayfair and

Belgravia.

 

Its houses loomed tall, with many windows, mostly lightless—materially

aggravating that air of isolate, cold dignity which distinguishes the

Englishman’s castle. Here and there stood one less bedraggled than

its neighbors, though all, without exception, spoke assertively of

respectability down-at-the-heel but fighting tenaciously for existence.

Some, vanguards of that imminent day when the boarding-house should reign

supreme, wore with shamefaced air placards of estate-agents, advertising

their susceptibility to sale or lease. In the company of the latter was

Number 9.

 

The American noted the circumstance subconsciously, at a moment when Miss

Calendar’s hand, small as a child’s, warm and compact in its white glove,

lay in his own. And then she was on the sidewalk, her face, upturned to

his, vivacious with excitement.

 

“You have been so kind,” she told him warmly, “that one hardly knows how to

thank you, Mr. Kirkwood.”

 

“I have done nothing—nothing at all,” he mumbled, disturbed by a sudden,

unreasoning alarm for her.

 

She passed quickly to the shelter of the pillared portico. He followed

clumsily. On the doorstep she turned, offering her hand. He took and

retained it.

 

“Good night,” she said.

 

“I’m to understand that I’m dismissed, then?” he stammered ruefully.

 

She evaded his eyes. “I—thank you—I have no further need—”

 

“You are quite sure? Won’t you believe me at your service?”

 

She laughed uneasily. “I’m all right now.”

 

“I can do nothing more? Sure?”

 

“Nothing. But you—you make me almost sorry I can’t impose still further

upon your good nature.”

 

“Please don’t hesitate …”

 

“Aren’t you very persistent, Mr. Kirkwood?” Her fingers moved in his;

burning with the reproof, he released them, and turned to her so woebegone

a countenance that she repented of her severity. “Don’t worry about me,

please. I am truly safe now. Some day I hope to be able to thank you

adequately. Good night!”

 

Her pass-key grated in the lock. Opening, the door disclosed a dark and

uninviting entry-hall, through which there breathed an air heavy with the

dank and dusty odor of untenanted rooms. Hesitating on the threshold, over

her shoulder the girl smiled kindly upon her commandeered esquire; and

stepped within.

 

He lifted his hat automatically. The door closed with an echoing slam. He

turned to the waiting cab, fumbling for change.

 

“I’ll walk,” he told the cabby, paying him off.

 

The hansom swept away to a tune of hammering hoofs; and quiet rested upon

the street as Kirkwood turned the nearest corner, in an unpleasant temper,

puzzled and discontented. It seemed hardly fair that he should have been

dragged into so promising an adventure, by his ears (so to put it), only to

be thus summarily called upon to write “Finis” beneath the incident.

 

He rounded the corner and walked half-way to the next street, coming to an

abrupt and rebellious pause by the entrance to a covered alleyway, of two

minds as to his proper course of action.

 

In the background of his thoughts Number 9, Frognall Street, reared its

five-story fa�ade, sinister and forbidding. He reminded himself of its

unlighted windows; of its sign, “To be let”; of the effluvia of desolation

that had saluted him when the door swung wide. A deserted house; and the

girl alone in it!—was it right for him to leave her so?

IV

9 FROGNALL STREET, W. C.

 

The covered alleyway gave upon Quadrant Mews; or so declared a notice

painted on the dead wall of the passage.

 

Overhead, complaining as it swayed in the wind, hung the smirched and

weather-worn sign-board of the Hog-in-the-Pound public house; wherefrom

escaped sounds of such revelry by night as is indulged in by the British

working-man in hours of ease. At the curb in front of the house of

entertainment, dejected animals drooping between their shafts, two hansoms

stood in waiting, until such time as the lords of their destinies should

see fit to sally forth and inflict themselves upon a cab-hungry populace.

As Kirkwood turned, a third vehicle rumbled up out of the mews.

 

Kirkwood can close his eyes, even at this late day, and both see and hear

it all again—even as he can see the unbroken row of dingy dwellings that

lined his way back from Quadrant Mews to Frognall Street corner: all

drab and unkempt, all sporting in their fanlights the legend and lure,

“Furnished Apartments.”

 

For, between his curiosity about and his concern for the girl, he was being

led back to Number 9, by the nose, as it were,—hardly willingly, at best.

Profoundly stupefied by the contemplation of his own temerity, he yet

returned unfaltering. He who had for so long plumed himself upon his strict

supervision of his personal affairs and equally steadfast unconsciousness

of his neighbor’s businesses, now found himself in the very act of pushing

in where he was not wanted: as he had been advised in well-nigh as many

words. He experienced an effect of standing to one side, a witness of

his own folly, with rising wonder, unable to credit the strength of

the infatuation which was placing him so conspicuously in the way of a

snubbing.

 

If perchance he were to meet the girl again as she was leaving Number

9,—what then? The contingency dismayed him incredibly, in view of the fact

that it did not avail to make him pause. To the contrary he disregarded it

resolutely; mad, impertinent, justified of his unnamed apprehensions, or

simply addled,—he held on his way.

 

He turned up Frognall Street with the manner of one out for a leisurely

evening stroll. Simultaneously, from the farther corner, another pedestrian

debouched, into the thoroughfare—a mere moving shadow at that distance,

brother to blacker shadows that skulked in the fenced areas and unlively

entries of that poorly lighted block. The hush was something beyond belief,

when one remembered the nearness of blatant Tottenham Court Road.

 

Kirkwood conceived a wholly senseless curiosity about the other wayfarer.

The man was walking rapidly, heels ringing with uncouth loudness, cane

tapping the flagging at brief intervals. Both sounds ceased abruptly as

their cause turned in beneath one of the porticos. In the emphatic and

unnatural quiet that followed, Kirkwood, stepping more lightly, fancied

that another shadow followed the first, noiselessly and with furtive

stealth.

 

Could it be Number 9 into which they had passed? The American’s heart beat

a livelier tempo at the suggestion. If it had not been Number 9—he was

still too far away to tell—it was certainly one of the dwellings adjacent

thereunto. The improbable possibility (But why improbable?) that the girl

was being joined by her father, or by friends, annoyed him with illogical

intensity. He mended his own pace, designing to pass whichever house it

might be before the door should be closed; thought better of this, and

slowed up again, anathematizing himself with much excuse for being the

inquisitive dolt that he was.

 

Approaching Number 9 with laggard feet, he manufactured a desire to light

a cigarette, as a cover for his design, were he spied upon by unsuspected

eyes. Cane under arm, hands cupped to shield a vesta’s flame, he stopped

directly before the portico, turning his eyes askance to the shadowed

doorway; and made a discovery sufficiently startling to hold him spellbound

and, incidentally, to scorch his gloves before he thought to drop the

match.

 

The door of Number 9 stood ajar, a black interval an inch or so in width

showing between its edge and the jamb.

 

Suspicion and alarm set his wits a-tingle. More distinctly he recalled the

jarring bang, accompanied by the metallic click of the latch, when the girl

had shut herself in—and him out. Now, some person or persons had followed

her, neglecting the most obvious precaution of a householder. And why? Why

but because the intruders did not wish the sound of closing to be audible

to her—or those—within?

 

He reminded himself that it was all none of his affair, decided to pass on

and go his ways in peace, and impulsively, swinging about, marched straight

away for the unclosed door.

 

“‘Old’ard, guvner!”

 

Kirkwood halted on the cry, faltering in indecision. Should he take the

plunge, or withdraw? Synchronously he was conscious that a man’s figure

had detached itself from the shadows beneath the nearest portico and was

drawing nearer, with every indication of haste, to intercept him.

 

“‘Ere now, guvner, yer mykin’ a mistyke. You don’t live ‘ere.”

 

“How do you know?” demanded Kirkwood crisply, tightening his grip on his

stick.

 

Was this the second shadow he had seemed to see—the confederate of him who

had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so, the fellow

lacked discretion, though his determination that the American should not

interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and truculent manner, if more

warily, that the man closed in.

 

“I knows. You clear hout, or—”

 

He flung out a hand with the plausible design of grasping Kirkwood by the

collar. The latter lifted his stick, deflecting the arm, and incontinently

landed his other fist forcibly on the fellow’s chest. The man reeled back,

cursing. Before he could recover Kirkwood calmly crossed the threshold,

closed the door and put his shoulder to it. In another instant, fumbling in

the darkness, he found the bolts and drove them home.

 

And it was done, the transformation accomplished; his inability to refrain

from interfering had encompassed his downfall, had changed a peaceable and

law-abiding alien within British shores into a busybody, a trespasser, a

misdemeanant, a—yes, for all he knew to the contrary, in the estimation of

the Law, a burglar, prime candidate for a convict’s stripes!

 

Breathing hard with excitement he turned and laid his back against the

panels, trembling in every muscle, terrified